{"id":5925,"date":"2026-09-19T09:01:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T09:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/?p=5925"},"modified":"2026-09-21T09:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T09:13:16","slug":"what-happens-if-namibias-oil-contracts-never-get-published","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/what-happens-if-namibias-oil-contracts-never-get-published\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens If Namibia&#8217;s Oil Contracts Never Get Published?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every deal we&#8217;ve covered in this series \u2014 TotalEnergies taking over Mopane, the Equinor stake purchase, the Venus fiscal terms \u2014 you&#8217;ve read about through press releases, government statements, and industry reporting. What you haven&#8217;t been able to do, as an ordinary Namibian, is read the actual contracts yourself. And right now, that&#8217;s still true.<\/p><div class=\"03bb5c02e2f58c6bb7f372bc13011e34\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size:10px;\">Advertisement<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-8677361123316975\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ZXZ -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8677361123316975\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3054782407\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br><br \/>\n<\/div>\n\r\n<h4>The Standard That Exists \u2014 And Namibia Hasn&#8217;t Joined Yet<\/h4>\r\n<p>The global benchmark for this kind of transparency is the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a Norway-based standard that requires member countries to disclose information across the entire extractive industry value chain \u2014 how licenses and extraction rights get awarded, how much revenue actually flows to government, and how that revenue is spent. As of late 2024, 41 of EITI&#8217;s 55 implementing countries had disclosed at least some oil, gas, or mining contracts, with 16 publishing all or most of their petroleum contracts outright.<\/p>\r\n<p>Namibia has been discussing EITI membership since at least 2021, when the energy minister first signalled an intention to join before the end of 2025. That deadline came and went. As of mid-2024, the government had commissioned an assessment and was still reviewing it, with no decision yet forwarded to Cabinet. Namibia&#8217;s own Harambee Prosperity Plan II commits the government to either joining EITI or introducing equivalent domestic reforms \u2014 but as civil society groups have pointed out, commitments on paper and actual gazetted regulation are two very different things.<\/p>\r\n<h4>Why This Isn&#8217;t Just a Paperwork Question<\/h4>\r\n<p>Publishing contracts sounds like a bureaucratic detail, but it changes what&#8217;s actually possible for citizens and independent analysts to check. Contract transparency lets people verify the royalty rates, tax terms, and revenue-sharing arrangements a government has actually agreed to \u2014 rather than relying entirely on official summaries. It&#8217;s also a practical tool other countries have used to catch bad deals after the fact: in the Democratic Republic of Congo, public contract disclosure enabled outside scrutiny of a major infrastructure-for-minerals agreement, which directly contributed to that deal being renegotiated in 2024 on better terms. In the Republic of Congo, published contract data let government economists model actual revenue scenarios and identify room for simpler, more stable fiscal terms.<\/p>\r\n<p>Ghana offers the clearest African example of what &#8220;doing this well&#8221; looks like: since 2018, it has run a public online petroleum register listing its major offshore oil and gas contracts, complete with fiscal terms, operational status, and the identities of contracting parties \u2014 accessible to any citizen, journalist, or researcher who wants to check the government&#8217;s homework.<\/p>\r\n<h4>Namibia&#8217;s Own Track Record Is the Reason This Matters So Much<\/h4>\r\n<p>Namibia isn&#8217;t starting this conversation from a position of assumed trust. The 2019 &#8220;Fishrot&#8221; scandal \u2014 in which senior officials were accused of trading access to the country&#8217;s fishing quotas for bribes from an Icelandic company \u2014 remains the reference point Namibian civil society groups point to whenever they explain why extractive-sector transparency matters. The Institute for Public Policy Research has explicitly framed the push for EITI membership as an effort to prevent a repeat of that scandal, now that oil, expanding mining activity, and green hydrogen projects have dramatically raised the stakes of who controls access to Namibia&#8217;s resources.<\/p><div class=\"03bb5c02e2f58c6bb7f372bc13011e34\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size:10px;\">Advertisement<\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-8677361123316975\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ZXZ -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8677361123316975\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3054782407\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br><br \/>\n<\/div>\n\r\n<p>Namibia&#8217;s energy minister has publicly agreed, in principle, with the International Monetary Fund that all petroleum agreements between government and oil companies should be made public \u2014 a notable statement from the person actually responsible for negotiating them. But as Namibian commentators have pointed out, agreeing with the principle and implementing the regulation are different things, and the ministry has been criticised for remaining notably quiet about even more basic information, like the actual beneficial owners behind some of Namibia&#8217;s oil blocks.<\/p>\r\n<h4>Where Things Stand Right Now<\/h4>\r\n<p>As of 2026, Namibia has not joined EITI, and no full petroleum contracts have been published. The government&#8217;s own local content policy \u2014 approved by Cabinet in August 2026 \u2014 is itself a useful case study in the transparency gap: it has not yet been gazetted into law, and none of its specific numeric targets or thresholds have been made public, meaning even the policy meant to guarantee Namibians a fair share of the oil industry currently exists mostly as an announcement rather than an enforceable, checkable document.<\/p>\r\n<p>There has been real institutional movement in the right direction: a national dialogue specifically on EITI and extractive transparency was hosted in Windhoek in early 2026, bringing together the EITI Secretariat, civil society, and industry representatives to discuss next steps. But movement toward a decision is not the same as a decision, and analysts tracking Namibia&#8217;s oil governance have noted that the recent trend has actually run toward greater centralisation \u2014 moving core petroleum decision-making into the Office of the President \u2014 a change that can make coordination faster, but which raises the stakes even higher on whether that concentrated authority operates in the open.<\/p>\r\n<h4>What Publishing Contracts Would Actually Let Namibians Check<\/h4>\r\n<p>If Namibia did fully publish its petroleum agreements, ordinary citizens and independent analysts would finally be able to verify things this series has had to take on faith from official statements: the exact royalty and tax terms locked in for Venus and Mopane, precisely what commitments operators have made on local content and training, whether the terms Namibia is negotiating right now are genuinely comparable to what other African oil nations have secured, and \u2014 perhaps most importantly \u2014 whether the same terms apply evenly across companies, or whether some deals are quietly more generous to Windhoek than others.<\/p>\r\n<h4>The Bottom Line<\/h4>\r\n<p>Namibia has said many of the right things about transparency \u2014 ministerial statements agreeing with the IMF, a national plan committing to EITI standards, public dialogues bringing in international experts. What it hasn&#8217;t yet done is the one thing that would make those statements independently checkable: actually publish the contracts. Until that happens, every fact in this article \u2014 and every fact in this entire series about Namibia&#8217;s oil deals \u2014 is something Namibians are being asked to trust from official announcements, not something they can verify for themselves. Given Namibia&#8217;s own recent history with the Fishrot scandal, that&#8217;s not a small gap to leave open while billions of dollars in future oil contracts are still being negotiated.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every deal we&#8217;ve covered in this series \u2014 TotalEnergies taking over Mopane, the Equinor stake purchase, the Venus fiscal terms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mining","category-oil-gas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5936,"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5925\/revisions\/5936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeroltha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}